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10 Things You Might Not Know About STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION

Geek Dave boldly unearths 10 things you might not know about Star Trek: The Next Generation.

1. Star Trek: The Next Generation was very nearly Enterprise-less. In the early planning for the show it was conceived that Transporter technology had advanced so much that space travel was not needed, the crew would simply teleport from planet to planet. Fortunately that idea was vetoed.

2. Gene Roddenberry originally envisioned a young man with a full head of hair as the Captain of the Enterprise-D, and so initially didn't want to cast Patrick Stewart as Picard. However, Stewart had impressed producer Robert H Justman so much that he continued to campaign to cast the British thespian. Roddenberry did finally relent, but only after auditioning many more people who he felt just didn't understand the part as much as Stewart did - which is kind of ironic as Patrick Stewart had never seen a full episode of Star Trek at the time!

3. But there was still one more hurdle for the casting of Picard, Paramount would have final say on all the actors chosen. So at the suggestion of the Star Trek producers Patrick Stewart wore a hairpiece for his first meeting with the Paramount Executives. They all loved him, but insisted that he must agree to not wearing his wig when playing the role.

4. There was almost a lot more of Deanna Troi! The original idea for her character was to be a highly sexual three breasted woman. Producer D.C. Fontana objected, later in an interview with Entertainment Weekly she said:

"I objected to Troi having
three breasts. I felt women have enough trouble with two. And how are
you going to line them up? Vertically, horizontally, or what? I was
like, please, don't go there. And they didn't, fortunately."

As anyone who has seen Total Recall will tell you, you line them up like this...

Bonus fact for you: That young lady above is Lycia Naff, who in 1989 appeared in 2 episodes of The Next Generation as Ensign Sonya Gomez. She only had two breasts at that time!

5. Wesley Snipes was amongst the actors in contention for the part of Geordi LaForge.

6. For the first two seasons of Star Trek: The Next Generation the Starfleet uniforms were one-piece spandex jumpsuits. Gene Roddenberry insisted that they were all made one size smaller than that of the actors wearing
them so they would fit like a second skin. All of the actors hated them, so from Season three the uniform was changed to a two-piece
outfit. Although these new outfits were a lot more comfortable the tops would rise up when the actors were seated. Patrick Stewart began to tug his shirt downwards, and this became a trademark of the character which was referred to by the rest of the cast and crew as "The Picard Maneuver"...

7. Although it's not exactly noticeable, part of the original Enterprise was reused on the Next Generation's Enterprise-D. The ceiling of the Next Gen transporter chamber is actually the floor of the transporter chamber from the Enterprise in the original 1960s
Star Trek TV show.

8. Lore was originally going to be a female android until Brent Spiner
himself came up with the idea of him being Data's evil twin. (I think he just wanted more screen time.)

9. Sticking with Brent Spiner, in 1991 he followed in the tradition of Star Trek legends William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy by releasing an album. Entitled Ol' Yellow Eyes Is Back, he called in some favours from his fellow Next Gen crew, so you'll also hear Patrick Stewart, Jonathan Frakes, LeVar Burton and Michael Dorn as back up singers. Take a listen to the track It's A Sin to Tell A Lie, which also features the dulcet tones of Patrick Stewart...

10. Who doesn't love the Borg? One of the finest 'big bads' a science fiction series ever had (imho). They were originally planned to be a race of insectoids, but that proved too expensive. But you might be surprised to know that with all their advanced assimilation technology the Borg still have on-board ship computers with 5.25" floppy disk drives! As you can clearly see in the episode Q Who...

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